Friday, May 23, 2014

The Normal Heart: How Bruce Davison Found His Valentine at Christmas (with my help)

Scheduling HBO’s production of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart for Memorial Day Weekend
makes perfect sense: the play is a memorial to those dead and gone in the early
days of the AIDS epidemic. Kramer, who was surrounded by dying friends in the
early 1980s, wrote The Normal Heart to
galvanize the gay community, the health bureaucracy, and the public at large.
It debuted at New York’s Public Theater in 1985, creating a major stir. None
other than Barbra Streisand bought the film rights, hoping to play the key role
of the female doctor who sympathetically confronts the crisis. But for ten long
years she couldn’t find funding. Now, at long last, HBO will broadcast a
full-length version on Sunday, May 25, with Julia Roberts as the doctor, and
Mark Ruffalo filling the role of Kramer’s own alter ego, activist NedWeeks.

I saw The Normal Heart in a tiny L.A. theatre,
the Las Palmas, soon after it played New York. The cast featured Oscar-winner
Richard Dreyfuss as Weeks and a pre-Misery
Kathy Bates as the doctor. But the actor I’ll never forget was Bruce
Davison, who dramatically succumbed to AIDS onstage, mere inches from those of
us in the front row.

Davison has had a long movie career, starting as a teenage
rapist in 1969’s Last Summer and
spanning everything from Willard (1971)
to Short Cuts (1993) to X-Men (2000). For Longtime Companion, the landmark 1989 feature film about the impact
of the AIDS epidemic on a circle of friends, he won many awards, and was
nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. But that was still in the future
when I talked to Bruce during the run of The
Normal Heart.

I was then writing for the Los AngelesTimes. Drama
editor Dan Sullivan had charged me with a series of articles tied to various
holiday periods. For Christmas, he suggested I ask several actors how they felt
about appearing on stage during a season when everyone else was home trimming
the tree. It was a thrill to chat with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, in
residence at L.A.’s Ahmanson Theatre in Foxfire.
Iloved the opportunity to meet
Nancy Kwan too. But when I spoke to Bruce Davison, the conversation ended up
changing HIS life. Here’s how it happened.

Bruce, a lively talker, told me he was delighted that The Normal Heart would be closed on both Christmas Eve and Christmas
Day. He viewed his brief holiday from the show as “24 hours out of the
trenches. I’d like to be with someone and share it. If you know of a beautiful
woman with a turkey . . . .”Continuing
the interview, I alluded to flame-haired actress Lisa Pelikan, who had told me she was glad
to be working at Christmas to distract from a recent break-up. Bruce was
immediately interested: they’d never met, but she was exactly the kind of
beautiful woman he had in mind. It was none of my business, certainly, but I
encouraged him to look her up. From what I later heard, he bought a ticket to
her play, then rushed backstage afterwards, exclaiming, “I’veheard you’re single!” When I saw Bruce a few
weeks later, he said, “Thank you for Lisa.”

They wed on July 4, 1986 (I received a formal announcement),
and eventually had a son named Ethan. Of
course, in Hollywood nothing good ever lasts. Bruce and Lisa divorced after
twenty years, and are now both attached to others. Still, I treasure the memory
of the time that I, a mild-mannered reporter, got to play Cupid.

2 comments:

That's a sweet story - even if it didn't end in Happily Ever After (with each other). I've always liked Bruce Davison - and friends who worked with him on the mediocre sports romance Summer Catch said he was a joy - professional and full of good cheer despite his onscreen villainy (he's the rich father who doesn't want his daughter dating the working class shmoe...) I hope to meet hime one day, Well done, Ms. C - for Cupid!

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About Me

As someone who has always been passionate about language, I prefer good conversation to, well, just about anything. And for me chatting about movies is a special treat. I’m convinced that movies can shape lives. On this topic I’ve got some great stories to tell, and I invite YOU to share your own. But because I’m a show biz survivor, I will also sometimes pull back the curtain to show you the inner workings of the film industry. Read, and enjoy!